31 July 2007

-- GHAZNI, Afghanistan -- South Korea and relatives of 21 kidnapped Koreans appealed for U.S. help Tuesday, but Afghanistan said for the first time it will not release insurgent prisoners — the Taliban's key demand to free the captives.

Ok, Hamid... that's a good start, but here's the rest of the scenario.

You take that list of prisoners the Taliban gave you... and after drawing straws, or a round of one-potato - two potato... you, FIRST... hang two jihadis to get Timmy Terrorist's attention and, more importantly, balance out the scoreboard.

SECOND... tell Timmy to give up his hostages now... or you hang one of these terrorheads at the top of every hour until you empty out the hoosegow.

These guys don't understand Geneva Convention... they understand death... and until you start playing their game, they'll always be ahead of you.

Personally... if my kid was in Afghanistan, and if it gave my child even a marginally better chance of survival - there isn't a raggedy-ass terrorist scrotum I'd hesitate to introduce to my good friend "Major Voltage".

So c'mon, let's be brutally honest. If right now, it was your kid pullin' security patrol out in the Panjwaii, what mother or father out there wouldn't be saying, "Red is negative, black is... "

"In investigators’ offices, an intricate graph plotting the links between the 17 men and teens charged with being members of a homegrown terrorist cell covers at least one wall. And still, says a source, it is difficult to find a common denominator."

Yup... it's the stuff of television whodunnits...

-- We now cross live to the set of CSI Toronto, where filming is underway:

-- Sgt. Warren Bollard: (staring in bewilderment at an intricate graph) I just can’t find any common denominator!

It seems as though these 17 men and teens have absolutely no point of commonality at all!

The web site's "retouched" shots of children range from slightly eerie -- cartoon-like skin tones and glassy stares -- to OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THAT THING? A doll? A robot? A zombie? A zombie robot doll, designed to kill its parents in their sleep and send all their money to an offshore bank account?

-- VANCOUVER -- There are so many people in B.C. scamming Canada's foreign student-visa program - from bogus students to shady schools - that authorities can only investigate about five per cent of the cases, according to an internal government report obtained by CanWest News Service.

Uh, guys... I think I've found the problem here.

While immigration officers have the power to place conditions on foreign students to attend school, they often don't.

"The effect of this is that there is no requirement that a student actually attend school despite the fact that the individual is in Canada to study," the report stated.

30 July 2007

-- BEIJING, July 31 (Reuters) -- A Chinese wildlife research centre has come up with a novel idea to profit from panda poo -- make Olympic souvenirs out of it.

Researchers at the centre in Chengdu, capital of mountainous Sichuan province, had sculpted photo frames, bookmarks, fans and panda statues out of the 300 tonnes of the stuff produced by 60 giant pandas each year, state media said on Tuesday.

Concerns about the "sinister uses" of guns in society have prompted University of Toronto officials to rid the campus of its 88-year-old sport shooting range, despite its continued popularity and spotless safety record.

"In today's world, even the perception of tolerance of guns and gun violence is seen as a negative," said Catherine Riggall, the university's vice-president of business affairs, who approved the decision recently.

I dunno Catherine... given the repeated unwillingness of the various "communities" out there to cooperate with the police... there actually seems to be a demonstrated never-ending tolerance for gun violence... but don't let that stop you from shutting down a legitimate activity that hasn't harmed a single person in almost a century of it's existence.

Ms. Riggall concludes...

"This is the last university in the country to have a gun range on campus ... it's just not seen as a priority activity."

New Canadian research shows that the presence of trans fats in the blood system can also mess with the heart's rhythm, worsening the severity of a heart attack and jacking up the likelihood of death.

"It's like a double whammy," said Peter Light, a researcher at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute in Edmonton and lead author of the study.

The new study, published in the European Molecular Biology Journal, helps elucidate how trans fats kill. Dr. Light said the heart is essentially an electric organ, and it uses fat as an energy source. A wave of electricity passes through the heart once per second, and each time calcium is pumped in and then out again.

Singapore's Muslims should be treated as willing organ donors when they die, the country's Islamic authority says. The ruling will remove their exemption from a law allowing doctors to remove the heart, kidneys or liver of a body.

As with all other Singaporeans, Muslims will be able to opt out of the donation scheme while they are alive.

The Liberals are quickly passing a slew of government bills over the next few days before the house rises and doesn't return until after the October election.

But left to die quietly are 107 private member's bills ranging from declaring the "apple capital of Ontario" to a bill requiring people to fill out organ donation cards before renewing their driver's licences.

We went into the jungle (of British Columbia). There we joined a dynamite stick with a battery and triggered off a blast.

Lakhbir and Inderjit, even at that time, had in their minds a plan to blast an aeroplane. I was not too keen on this plan but agreed to arrange for the dynamite sticks.

Also interesting is the alleged targeted killing of Talwinder Singh Parmar by Indian police... apparently to cover a link to a police informer.

Sarabjit said the PHRO’s probe has shown that Parmar was killed to hide the name of Lakhbir, who was an Indian agent.

The PHRO told Canadian authorities that conclusive evidence existed of Parmar being killed in police custody and not in the "encounter" shown in FIR No 105 registered at Phillaur police station on October 15, 1992.

The PHRO report, AI Flight 182 Case, states "On October 14, 1992, a high-level decision was conveyed to the police that Parmar had to be killed..."

Police in India are denying that Parmar was murdered and have attempted to portray this version of events as a further coverup by Canada's national law enforcement agency.

Then Jalandhar SSP and now IGP, Satish K Sharma, denied the charge. “It was a clean encounter.

The RCMP is bringing this up because they botched their investigations and failed to get convictions,” he said.

Apparently rapper Michael "Trick" George of the group "Lowlife" gets to live, so to speak, his art.

Homicide investigators are looking for the public's help in piecing together the details of the city's forty-sixth homicide after a man was found dead in a car early this morning.

Upon arrival, they found the body of Michael George, 25, inside his Chevrolet Malibu in the driveway of his residence on Wilcox Creek Pathway.

Police say he had been shot several times.

**********

RELATED: Time out for an opposing viewpoint...

Marla emailed me to say she thinks there is some sort of equivalence between the fatal shooting of high school student Jane Creba and the murder of Marla's friend, 31 year-old Sean "Juice" James.

Creba was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but you do not allow the same room for Shawn.

Why, because he is black, was on a street known for late night drug deals - late at night - and dresses a certain way?

Marla... despite the fact that you seem to be accusing me of being an implacable, unreasoning racist... lemme take a second here, to point out a couple of obviously glaring inconsistencies in your thesis.

One... witnesses say a cab rolled up on Sean at two in the morning in an area of the city known for drug deals... and the occupants shot him dead.

In the Creba murder, two gangs of young, armed black men started blasting away at each other on one of the city's busiest streets during retail shopping hours.

Now Marla, perhaps the witnesses are, for whatever reason, lying about your friend. It doesn't seem like the simplest, or most obvious explanation... but it certainly is a possibility.

Will you, in turn... admit that it's also possible that the media coverage is correct?

As for your comments regarding the Ephraim Brown shooting...

With Ephraim's family, that is where they were celebrating a family birthday etc. It may not have been the most responsible thing in the world to do, in hindsight.

But at the time, they probably were trying to enjoy themselves and not anticipating a gang member to show up and destroy their nice evg. People the world over -and here in Toronto, live differently from you, party differently from you and exist differently from you.

All I can say here is that, cultural differences and "partying differences" (whatever that means) aside... letting an 11 year old child out at "Banger Central" at one in the morning is not only not, "the most responsible thing in the world to do"... it borders on sheer insanity.

And whoever decided to let Ephraim out at this hour, at this place... will have to live with the knowledge that they could... and indisputably should have... made another choice.

It's too late to play silly games any more. If handguns are the cause of all this we have to ask why there are so few shootings in, for example, the Dutch, Ukrainian, Irish, Portuguese, Korean, Hindu or African communities.

Buzz Hargrove, Maude Barlow and an array of academics have signed their names to a declaration in support of Mohawk land claims and the occupation of a Deseronto quarry.

Signatories include Ismail Zayid, president of the Canada Palestine Association; Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees; Amanda Aziz, national chairwoman of the Canadian Federation of Students and left-wing activist Judy Rebick.

The fact that a legitimate business owner has had his business stolen out from under him, hasn't caused too much mourning in "progressive" circles...

The CAW often puts its name behind these causes, said Raj Dhaliwal, the union's director of human rights.

The plight of the quarry owner, Terry Kimmett, is "unfortunate," Dhaliwal said. "I could sympathize with the person."

Silly me... Ontario schools are making students flog candy bars to family and friends to raise money for school supplies... we haven't had a family doctor since we moved six years ago... and Dalton McGuinty is doling out unsolicited cash for new cricket pitches.

-- TORONTO -- The head of the Ontario Cricket Association said it should not have to return any of the $1-million grant it received from the Ontario government and, in fact, he plans to ask for more funding.

"This amount of money is barely scratching the surface of what's needed," he said. "Cricket is growing exponentially in Canada. As the sport grows we need to have infrastructure facilities in place."

Why is it NATO has to meticulously "investigate and prove" everything before catching the tiniest break... but the enemy simply has to hop around screaming "war crimes" and the media jumps in with both feet?

NATO and Afghan troops clashed with Taliban insurgents and called in air strikes, killing at least 50 suspected militants and dozens of civilians, including women and children, local officials and villagers said Friday.

Nobody ever seems to question why these "atrocities" always occur in remote Taliban controlled villages where you have to take illiterate, raggedy-assed Mullah Abdullah's word that all the village children were turned into crispy-critters.

Oh yeah... and don't worry about evidence... everybody's long since buried in our secret graveyard.

The Epoch Times has learned that CPAC board members figured prominently in a fundraiser for Ontario Citizenship and Immigration Minister Mike Colle six weeks before Colle's office issued the first of two unadvertised grants to CPAC.

The grants totalled $275,000.

Workers with other immigrant service providers declined to be interviewed for this story, citing concerns that publicly criticizing the government over its relationship with CPAC might hurt their own efforts to win grants.

However, one said of CPAC: "To be honest, it is not that they have been doing this the longest or that they have the best track record. Somehow they have managed to get the most attention from the minister."

Reminiscent of a landmark episode of Seinfeld, here's a somewhat surrealistic moment in Canadian politics... wherein the Fiberals, Dippers and the Bloc-heads team up to piss all over our aboriginal brothers.

-- OTTAWA -- The three opposition parties have formed a united front to block the Conservative government's quest to pass a law that would make the Indian Act subject to the federal human rights code.

What's that scary Stephen Harper up to now?

Bill C-44 would remove a 30-year-old exemption of the Indian Act from the Canadian Human Rights Act and extend the reach of the Canadian Human Rights Commission over claims of discrimination that have been shielded because the Indian Act is outside the human rights code.

The Canadian Human Rights Act outlaws discrimination in employment and services on such grounds as sex, race, ethnic origin, and marital status. The exemption has been condemned time and again in Canada and at the United Nations.

An eagerly anticipated auditor general's report into year-end government grants to ethnic groups with alleged Liberal party ties won't do anything to help the party's image when it's released Thursday, opposition critics say.

Despite the McGuinty governments best efforts to stonewall any investigation of their massive bribe-a-bloc initiative... this report is gonna surface at a very critical juncture.

The Liberals initially voted down an opposition motion to have the province's auditor examine how $32 million in grants were doled out to various multicultural organizations – some of which were said to have Liberal ties – at the end of the last fiscal year.

Instead, the Liberals passed a motion urging the grant beneficiaries to account for their spending and to report back within six months – a deadline that would have been after the Oct. 10 election – but later bowed to opposition pressure.

Legislators in the Indonesian province of Papua are debating whether to approve a bill allowing microchips to be implanted in people with HIV.

The measure has been put forward as a way of preventing the spread of HIV in the Indonesian province. About 2.4% of Papuans are known to be carrying the virus, and infection rates in the province are estimated to be 15 times the national average.

And they're apparently not planning on stopping at microchips.

As well as calling for the introduction of microchips, the bill also suggests mandatory testing of every resident in Papua.

Parliamentarians are reported to have discussed tattooing those found to be carrying the virus.

It's certainly not an idea you'd hear anyone advancing around here.

A couple of years ago, after experiencing what paramedics euphemistically refer to as a "syncopal episode", I found myself in hospital for the biological equivalent of a 72 hour automobile diagnostic.

When machine science failed to turn up any foreign objects or obvious defects in the old brainbox... the neurology residents started spitballin... and one of their ideas was to test for sexually transmitted diseases, including of course, HIV/AIDS. I gather the request stirs up a good bit of resentment in these parts because of the rather tentative way they asked for my permission.

As a non-junkie and unashamedly monogamous, heterosexual husband & father, I hadn't expected this particular request... but as the recipient of a single tattoo acquired some ten years previous, from a less than surgical suite type operation, I agreed to their request.

Compared to the repeated, and less than pleasant extraction of spinal fluid... it seemed like a pretty insignificant procedure.

As it turns out, the tests came back negative and to this day, no one has the faintest idea what happened that fateful night... but the whole experience gave me an appreciation for the importance of personal health.

I'm guessing I'm also one of the few people around here who can actually prove they're not syphilitic, or HIV positive. Not that it'll ever come up in polite conversation.

The Globe leads with a story implying the Harper government is blackmailing their own staffers to contribute money to the party... with a huge emphasis on how everyone is enraged at the allegedly coerced tithing...

Senior political staff in the Harper government say they have been asked to donate $1,000 to the Conservative Party, a move that has sparked resentment among some of the most stalwart supporters of the Prime Minister's Office.

You have to read to the end of the article to see what a non-story this piece of fluff really is...

When in government, the Liberals also encouraged their chiefs of staff to join the Laurier Club, a fundraising arm of the party that costs $1,000 to join for those over 30. Most agreed, said a former Liberal official, although some balked out of principle.

-- TORONTO -- The federal minority Conservative government's efforts to clamp down on the gun violence plaguing some of Canada's big-city streets are being thwarted by the Liberal-dominated Senate, the country's justice minister complained Tuesday.

"The Liberals talk out of both sides of their mouth," Nicholson told The Canadian Press from his riding in Niagara Falls, Ont.

"They say, when it's to their advantage during elections, that they're tough on crime, but where is the support when we're bringing forward these pieces of legislation?"

Into doing his job properly... as he did trying to "ban", for instance, dogs and handguns... there'd be a few less bodies littering the streets...

Witness the Ephraim Brown shooting...

The two men, just out of their teens, have a history of criminal charges. In Mr. Eubank's case, those charges include weapons offences, allegations he assaulted a police officer and, on one occasion, eight counts of failing to comply with bail conditions.

In March of last year, Mr. Eubank went to trial on multiple charges. After more than a week, the judge instructed the jury to return a not-guilty verdict.

As for the other man arrested in this case... apparently the first kid he shot was deductable.

In the summer of 2005, Mr. Sappleton was arrested and charged in connection with the notorious drive-by shooting that wounded four-year-old Shaquan Cadougan — charges that were withdrawn by prosecutors.

What law... what ban... does Michael Bryant imagine, in his wildest dreams, will stop these two predators from procuring and using guns?

So maybe before our esteemed Liberal Attorney General starts screaming about taking perfectly legal registered firearms away from law-abiding citizens... he should get his own house in order. And get these assholes off the street for good.

There have been laws against possessing unregistered handguns since the 1930's... and I'm pretty sure nobody has recently repealed the laws regarding murder... so what exactly is this idiot yammering about now?

-- TORONTO -- Toronto Mayor David Miller called Sunday for tougher gun laws after a spate of late-night shootings left an 11-year-old and two others dead in unrelated incidents.

“It's very clear that gun violence is connected to the ownership of guns,” Mr. Miller told the media.

Yeah... show me the connection here.

How exactly is going after legitimate owners of registered firearms gonna affect the overwhelmingly black-on-black gun violence that is plaguing Toronto-the-less-than-good?

If, in fact, police ever find the shooters, or the guns here... and with the less than spectacular cooperation from the "communities" involved, that's daily becoming less and less of a sure thing... they're gonna find that the guns in question were smuggled over our badly defended borders by one of Toronto's many criminal gangs.

Like the rest of Toronto's gun violence, these murders have nothing to do with legitimate owners and registered firearms.

Apparently though, no amount of factual evidence is gonna stop "Chicken Little" Miller and his progressive cheerleaders from trying to skew the responsibility here.

And where's Taliban Jack? If he really cared about saving lives maybe he could take a break from crapping on the military and hold a press conference demanding beefed up border security?

Yeah, right.

So what would actually do some good here?

How about more cops, less smoke and mirrors?

How about no more pretending the problem lies with law-abiding citizens?

You guessed it... the out of control police brutality in Toronto towards the visiting Chilean soccer team.

The cops prevent some sore-loser, third world soccer hooligans from beating up game referees... and it's another black eye for our repressive, racist system of government.

The confrontation between the Chilean soccer team and Toronto police rapidly escalated to become an international incident, with officials in Santiago laying the blame squarely on Canadian authorities.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet told local reporters she was dismayed with the use of "unjustified aggression" by Toronto police after a bloody brawl following a FIFA U-20 World Cup match late Thursday.

You get a whiff of what actually happened, near the bottom of the article...

When the final whistle blew and Chile had been shut out 3-0, the team started to go after the referees, egged on by an angry public audience. However, police ushered the refs away to the tunnels underneath the stands.

21 July 2007

Ripping people to pieces... Italian police have raided a mosque and disrupted a "school for terror."

Police in central Italy say they have uncovered a bomb school for Islamist militants after raiding a mosque in Perugia and making three arrests.

Evidence of training in explosives and poisons, and instructions on flying a Boeing 747 were reportedly found. They seized the imam and two other men, all Moroccans, and have a warrant for a fourth man believed to be abroad.

Anybody who thinks the islamofascist jihad couldn't possibly affect their lives, should pull their heads up outta the sand.

-- SYDNEY, July 22 (Reuters) -- Australian police were investigating whether an Indian doctor detained on terror charges may have been plotting to blow up a high-rise building on the Gold Coast, the Sunday Mail newspaper reported on Sunday.

Mexican cantaloupe irrigated with water from sewage-tainted rivers. Candy laced with lead.

Producers in other developing nations are notorious violators of basic food-safety standards, even as they woo consumers with a growing appetite for foods such as pickled mangoes from India and fruits and vegetables during winter from Mexico.

Most people are aware of the unbelievable messes originating in China, but the problem is much, much larger than that.

China, already under suspicion as the source of tainted toothpaste, contaminated fish and toxic medicine, logged the largest number of violations in the past 12 months, with the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration rejecting 1,901 shipments of food and cosmetics.

But India and Mexico weren't far behind, with inspectors rejecting 1,787 and 1,560 shipments, respectively. The biggest reasons? Foods that are unapproved or contain poisons and pesticides.

Some are simply dirty, with inspectors finding that the shipment "appears to consist in whole or in part of a filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance or be otherwise unfit for food."

Or you can just learn to live with stuff like this... because there's only one way to be totally sure about food nowadays.

With 47 per cent of the potential Palestinian labour force unemployed and a per capita income 23 times less than that of Israel, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) has a difficult enough job.

What I don't understand, is how all the loony leftbot Hamas cheerleaders in the western world can sleep at night.

In June, the PGFTU said Hamas seized their headquarters and ordered the union's staff to discuss how they were to operate under Hamas rule. According to Shaher Saed, general secretary of the PGFTU, the union refused to negotiate.

As a result, Saed said, three assassination attempts were made by Hamas on Rasem Al Bayari, the union's deputy general secretary, which included a rocket attack on his home in January and the bombing of his office in February.

Maybe what we need to do is send an enlightened progressive like Sid Ryan to Gaza... to straighten out this misunderstanding.

-- NEW DELHI (AP) -- India elected Pratibha Patil as the country's first female president Saturday in a vote seen as a victory for the hundreds of millions of Indian women who contend with widespread discrimination.

The election of a woman to the largely ceremonial post continues an Indian tradition using the presidency to bolster disadvantaged communities.

Hindu-majority India has had three Muslim presidents, including incumbent A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, since winning independence from Britain in 1947. It has also had a president from the minority Sikh community, and Kalam's predecessor, K. R. Narayanan, came from the bottom of the society's complex social hierarchy.

I'm not sure people should be breaking out the champagne and party hats just yet... India obviously has a ways to go on the road to a just society.

While India has had several women in positions of power - most notably Indira Gandhi, who was elected to the more powerful position of prime minister in 1966, and her daughter-in-law, Sonia Gandhi- many women still face rampant discrimination.

Many Indian families regard daughters as a liability due to a tradition requiring a bride's family to pay a groom's family a large dowry of cash and gifts. As a consequence their education is often neglected, and many don't get adequate medical treatment when ill.

"It is the sacred responsibility of the Chinese armed forces to stop the 'Taiwan independence' forces from splitting the country," says the paper.

"Should the Taiwan authorities go so far as to make a reckless attempt that constitutes a major incident of 'Taiwan independence', the Chinese people and armed forces will resolutely and thoroughly crush it at any cost."

Transit commissioners will hold an emergency meeting today to look at shutting down the $1-billion Sheppard subway line and boosting the cost of a token by as much as a quarter.

Mayor David Miller said the cash-strapped TTC has no choice but to look at taking extreme measures because city council this week voted to put off until Oct. 22 a decision on whether to impose an unpopular land-transfer tax and a $60-a-year vehicle registration fee.

Uh, Mr Mayor... how about scrapping the limo service for city councillors to save some additional money and show solidarity with affected city commuters?Yeah, I didn't think so.

Councillor Michael Thompson, who is also a transit commissioner, contended the call for TTC cuts was a continuation of a fear-mongering campaign launched by Miller to gain support for the two taxes.

-- LONDON -- The father and uncle of a woman who was brutally murdered for falling in love with the wrong man were sentenced to life in prison Friday.

The 2006 murder of 20-year-old Banaz Mahmod, 20, who was strangled after two hours of torture and sexual abuse, was the latest in an increasing trend of so-called "honor killings" in Britain, home to some 1.8 million Muslims.

Mahmod's family accused her of shaming them by ending an abusive arranged marriage, becoming too Westernized and falling in love with a man who did not come from their village.